Lies of P Review 2026: Should You Buy It?

What is Lies of P?

In our view, Lies of P is one of the most compelling and polished soulslike action RPGs to emerge from a studio outside of FromSoftware's direct lineage. Developed by South Korean studio NEOWIZ and the talented team at Round8 Studio, it is a dark, twisted reimagining of Carlo Collodi's classic tale, Pinocchio. The game casts you as P, a mechanoid puppet, who awakens in a plague-ridden, Belle Époque-inspired city of Krat. Your quest is to find your creator, Geppetto, and uncover the truth behind a catastrophic puppet frenzy that has decimated the city's human population. The central narrative hook—the 'Lies' of the title—brilliantly weaves into both story and mechanics, presenting you with morally ambiguous choices that can alter your character and the world's fate. It is a single-player experience through and through, focused on atmospheric exploration, punishing combat, and a deeply melancholic story about humanity, truth, and what it means to become 'real'.

Gameplay

To play Lies of P is to engage in a masterfully tuned dance of steel and desperation. The core loop will be instantly familiar to veterans of the genre: explore interconnected, hazard-filled districts, battle grotesque enemies, retrieve your lost 'Ergo' (souls) upon death, and conquer towering, multi-phase boss encounters. Where Lies of P carves its own identity is in its exquisite mechanical precision and several ingenious systems. The combat feels exceptionally weighty and deliberate; every swing of your equipped weapon, from greatswords to rapier-like blades, carries a tangible heft. The game introduces a perfect guard system, a parry that requires impeccable timing to negate damage and break enemy weapons, which becomes essential against later bosses. This is complemented by a dynamic weapon assembly system, allowing you to mix and match blades and handles from a vast arsenal, each combination altering move sets, scaling, and special 'Fable Arts' abilities.

The learning curve is steep, as is tradition. Early areas serve as a harsh but fair tutorial, teaching you that aggression must always be tempered with caution. Enemy placement is deliberately cruel, and bosses demand pattern recognition and patience. However, the game offers tools to mitigate the difficulty. Your mechanical left arm, the Legion Arm, can be fitted with various gadgets like a grappling hook or a flamethrower, providing tactical advantages. The 'Lying' system also subtly influences gameplay, with certain choices granting permanent stat boosts. In our view, the gameplay achieves a remarkable depth, rewarding mastery while always making you feel like a scrappy underdog surviving through skill and cunning rather than overwhelming power. The lack of true multiplayer—there are no player invasions or co-op—focuses the experience entirely on your personal struggle against Krat's horrors.

Who is Lies of P for?

This is unequivocally a game for the hardcore action RPG enthusiast who relishes a significant challenge and immersive, lonely world-building. It is a strictly solo endeavour, designed for players who find satisfaction in overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds through persistence and incremental improvement. The closest and most obvious comparison is to FromSoftware's Bloodborne and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. From Bloodborne, it borrows the gothic, plague-ridden setting, a focus on aggressive but measured combat, and a similar aesthetic of corrupted beauty. From Sekiro, it adopts the emphasis on deflection and posture-breaking, though here it is an optional, high-skill tactic rather than a mandatory one.

However, it would be a disservice to label it a mere clone. Lies of P stands firmly on its own clockwork legs, offering a more structured narrative and a unique setting that distinguishes it from its inspirations. It is also for players who appreciate rich, environmental storytelling and a sombre, tragic narrative. If you have bounced off soulslikes due to their opaque mechanics or extreme difficulty, Lies of P is unlikely to convert you, despite its slightly more approachable systems. This is a game that demands your time, focus, and resilience.

Graphics and performance

Lies of P is a visually stunning achievement. Its art direction is a highlight, blending the ornate architecture and fashion of a stylised early 20th century with grotesque, oil-dripping puppetry and Lovecraftian biological horrors. The city of Krat is a character in itself, from the rain-slicked, lantern-lit streets of its central districts to the claustrophobic, corpse-strewn interiors of its grand hotels and factories. The enemy and character design is consistently exceptional, with each boss being a memorable spectacle of visual and mechanical design.

On a technical level, the game is highly polished. On PC, it offers a robust suite of graphics options, supporting ultrawide monitors and featuring technologies like DLSS and FSR. In our testing, performance was consistently solid, maintaining a stable framerate even in the most chaotic battles, provided your hardware meets the recommended specifications. The console versions, particularly on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, also deliver a smooth, high-fidelity experience. Load times after death are refreshingly quick, which is a crucial quality-of-life feature in a game where you will die frequently. There are minor instances of texture pop-in in larger areas, but nothing that significantly mars the otherwise impeccable presentation.

Value for money

A single playthrough of Lies of P, including tackling most optional areas and bosses, will take the average player between 35 to 45 hours. For a linear, narrative-driven soulslike, this is an exceptionally generous runtime. The game is densely packed with secrets, hidden questlines, and unique weapons to discover, encouraging thorough exploration. Furthermore, the New Game+ mode is meaningfully implemented, introducing new enemy placements, upgraded gear (P-Organ enhancements), and additional narrative layers based on the 'Lie' choices you made, giving significant incentive for at least a second playthrough.

Given the level of polish, content depth, and sheer quality on offer, Lies of P represents outstanding value for money at its standard AAA price point. It is a complete, self-contained experience with no live-service trappings or mandatory grind. The development team has also supported the game with substantial free post-launch updates, including additional weapons and quality-of-life features, further cementing its value proposition. In an era of bloated open worlds, its focused, high-density design is a virtue.

Verdict

Lies of P is a triumph. It does not simply mimic its inspirations; it analyses, understands, and refines them into a cohesive and fiercely compelling experience. The combat is deep and satisfying, the world is hauntingly beautiful, and the Pinocchio framing provides a uniquely poignant narrative backbone. Its difficulty is unapologetic, but its systems are fair and rewarding for those willing to learn.

We wholeheartedly recommend Lies of P to any fan of challenging action RPGs. You will love it if you crave precise, weighty combat, enjoy unravelling a tragic story through exploration, and possess the tenacity to face down some of the most creatively designed bosses in recent memory. However, you might not enjoy it if you have a low frustration threshold for repeated failure, prefer open-ended exploration over curated level design, or seek a light-hearted or cooperative gaming experience. For NEOWIZ, Lies of P is more than a successful debut in the genre; it is a bold statement of intent and a new benchmark for soulslikes developed outside of FromSoftware. It is a dark, demanding, and utterly magnificent fairy tale.